


Manuscript

by Marsalias



Series: Phic Phight 2020 [8]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23589583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/pseuds/Marsalias
Summary: Once, there were many half-ghosts. What happened to them?
Series: Phic Phight 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685794
Comments: 26
Kudos: 247
Collections: Phic Phight!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PhantomKick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomKick/gifts), [2fruity4u](https://archiveofourown.org/users/2fruity4u/gifts).



Once, there were half-ghosts.

Danny knew this, now, drumming his fingers on the hard plastic surface of the binder he'd borrowed from Sam. Written on one cover in purple sharpie was the title 'Voynich Manuscript.' It was, according to Sam, an untranslated 15th century work that had baffled cryptologists and linguists for years and years.

Danny could read it. It had been written by a half-ghost.

At least, that was the claim, and, considering that Danny could read this language he'd never learned, Danny was inclined to agree. He opened the binder again, running his fingers down the printed pictures of the pages. He'd been doing that off and on throughout the evening, ever since Sam had showed it to him, instead of doing his homework.

It was comforting. Strange, but comforting, to know that Vlad had not been the first half-ghost. To know that there were other paths to his future than 'bitter old man,' even if the other visible path was 'weird botanist.' To know that Vlad's issues really were _Vlad's_ issues, and not _half-ghost_ issues.

The book was about ghost plants, what they did, what they were good for, how to find them, and when to harvest them, complete with maps, time tables, and recipes. It was a sort of almanac, almost. A very out of date, almanac, true, and Danny was pretty sure _those_ islands weren't arranged like _that,_ at least not any more, but still...

And it had been written by a half ghost. That, more than anything else, was what kept drawing Danny to the pages. The author had barely mentioned their identity, skimming over their origins in the first couple of pages, but every plant had notes regarding how it affected half-ghosts in particular, every recipe was tuned for the half-ghost anatomy, with side effects listed for humans and ghosts as an afterthought.

Danny slowly leafed through the pages, occasionally pausing when sentences jumped out at him.

This book had been written by a half-ghost. It had been written _for_ half-ghosts.

Once, there had been half-ghosts. Many of them.

What had happened?

There were a limited number of people he could ask. He threw the book into his backpack, shouldered it, turned himself invisible and dropped through the floor. He fell through the kitchen and into the lab, whereupon he slowed his fall to a gradual drift and set himself down lightly on the floor.

His parents were, of course, working in the lab, but they didn't notice Danny. He padded by them, silent, and snagged the remote for the portal doors from the table. After taking a moment to make sure they didn't notice the sudden disappearance of the remote from the table, Danny pressed the button and darted through the still-opening doors.

Safely in the Ghost Zone, Danny released his invisibility, which he still found tiring to use for long periods of time, and went ghost. Ghostly tail streaming behind him, Danny flew to the lair of the only ghost he could be sure had all the answers.

.

The clock tower certainly lived up to the 'tower' part of its name, looming tall above Danny as he approached the front doors. Not that it didn't live up to the 'clock' part. It did. And the surrounding zone kept up the theme with all the gears floating around. It all added to the sense of foreboding about the place.

But what really pulled it off was the faint, persistent ringing sound that hung just on the edge of Danny's hearing, like that of a large bell that had been rung just a moment ago, its sound perpetually fading into imperceptibility but never quite getting there.

The doors opened as Danny raised his hand to knock on them. Danny always at least tried to knock on the doors, because the time he hadn't, he had walked right into them. Clockwork had a weird sense of humor.

"Clockwork?" called Danny, floating into the large main hall and searching the corners.

"Yes, Daniel?" said Clockwork, once again managing to wind up right behind Danny despite Danny's best efforts.

As always, Danny tried to hide how startled he was by turning and smoothing down his ruffled hair.

"Hi," said Danny. Clockwork smiled. "So, uh, I'm guessing you know why I'm here?"

"Yes," drawled Clockwork, circling Danny once, then floating away.

Danny flew after him. "I'm just, well, you understand why I'm curious, right?" asked Danny as they flew into a narrow hallway lined with time mirrors. Each one held an image of a different time, a different age. All the mirrors on the left were of the Ghost Zone, and all the mirrors on the right were of Earth.

"I do."

"So, you know what happened to them, right? All the halfas?"

"Of course," said Clockwork, stopping to face an image of a city that might have been London.

Danny drifted to peer over his shoulder. "Will you tell me? At least, what they were like?" he asked, hopefully.

His blood when cold(er) when Clockwork shifted to look at him. The expression on Clockwork's face was _pure_ trickster mentor.

"Oh, Daniel. You know I like you to find answers like that on your own time."

"Yeah, um, I'll just-"

Clockwork pushed him. Danny tumbled back, farther than the hallway should have allowed. Heck, heck, heck.

He righted himself, hands going to his chest. They seized on something small and round. When had Clockwork managed to slip a time medallion onto him?

After a beat he processed his question and snorted at himself. Clockwork could have put the medallion on him at _any_ time. That was kind of Clockwork's whole thing.

Danny looked around himself. He was still in the Ghost Zone (unless, of course, the Earth's sky had turned green for some reason), but the land beneath him spread out in all directions. There was even a slightly curved horizon.

Directly beneath him was a city. The streets were all covered over with blue cloth awnings, and the buildings sparkled like crystal.

Alright. So, Danny had a couple of choices. One, he could take the medallion off right now, go home, and have to learn whatever lesson Clockwork was trying to teach him the hard(er?) way. Two, he could stick around and (possibly) get the answer to one or more of his questions. Probably a lot of trauma, too, considering he'd asked about why the other half-ghosts were all _gone_ , but he could take the medallion off whenever, provided that no one decided to phase it into his chest.

Were there half-ghosts in the city beneath him?

He wanted, _needed_ to know.

Letting go of the medallion, he flew down diagonally, reaching ground level a good distance outside the city. He didn't know what the etiquette was for entering this city, but starting off at the gates was probably a good idea.

When he reached them, skimming along the purple earth, the gates were wide and open, the tunnel they formed in the wall carved with abstract swirls. There were no guards that Danny could see, and no one was going in or out through the gates, but Danny still proceeded cautiously. Beyond the gates he could hear the noise and bustle of a crowd, and, sure enough, as soon as he got past the first building he found himself in a marketplace.

This was not the first marketplace he'd seen in the Ghost Zone, and it had many familiar features. Unidentifiable glowing plants, glowing potion jars, glowing clothing, glowing powders, things with too many legs being sold as food, a lot of glowing in general, poison-bright colors on otherwise mundane merchandise, things that floated, rugs with kaleidoscoping patterns, etcetera.

The difference was that so many of the shoppers and merchants were human.

No, he corrected himself as he caught one of them changing forms with a pair of bright blue rings, they were _halfas._

.

Danny stayed in the market place and listened.

He listened to gossip and haggling and children playing with each other and begging for their parents to buy them this or that. He listened to merchants advertising their wares. He listened to a young man not much older than himself complaining about new powers. No one pointed Danny out as unusual, even when he switched forms a few times.

It was amazing, just seeing half-ghosts live like this. He wished he could talk to them, but although he could understand what they were saying, he had no confidence in his ability to pronounce the words.

It was just so peaceful.

A shape fell through the blue awnings stretched above the marketplace, tearing them and pulling down some of the poles and booths they were attached to. People screeched and shouted. Merchandise escaped. From the epicenter of the wreckage, a man stood, eyes flickering between sea green and toxic glowing orange.

"Lord Dimidius!" shouted one woman. "What has happened?"

The man's face was twisted in pain and fury. "Pariah Dark has declared war on us."

A hush fell over the market. Except for the chickens. Chickens feared neither man, ghost, or god.

"Why? My lord?" asked one of the men, floating forward.

"The Observants," Dimidius said, spitting, "gave him a prophecy that one of us will someday end his rule."

"Then let's make it true!"

"Time out," said Clockwork, putting a hand on Danny's shoulder. The scene froze, chickens and all.

Danny had been right about the trauma.

"Was this," said Danny, "about me fighting him? Did all these people die because I fought him, and the Observants saw that?"

"No," said Clockwork. "Ultimately, Pariah was looking for an excuse. The Observants wanted to give him one. The prophecy, as far as they knew, wasn't true. They made it up. Besides, Pariah doesn't succeed in taking this city for another hundred years, and most of the younger residents were able to flee to the human world."

Danny exhaled. "Really?"

"Would I lie to you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you would."

Clockwork laughed. "Let's get you home." He opened a portal. "Other than the revelation at the end, did you have a good time?"

"Yeah," said Danny. "I did."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by 2fruity4u.

"Daniel," said Clockwork, exasperation clear, "why don't you read the book?"

Danny who had been about to ask Clockwork another question about the historical half-ghosts and their city, closed his mouth and frowned. "But I have," he complained. He felt somewhat justified in complaining, seeing as how Clockwork felt justified in pushing him through a time portal without warning in lieu of answering a fairly simple question.

"Oh?" asked Clockwork, arching an eyebrow.

There are a lot of layers to that question. Danny can feel some of them in the same way he can feel his ghost sense. Danny didn't know how Clockwork did it.

He blushed. His many questions _were_ probably getting aggravating. "I _did_ read it," he repeated, staring at the tip of his tail. "But it doesn't really have anything about halfas in it."

"Nothing, you mean, other than the wealth of knowledge about how certain ghostly plants will affect you? About things you can use to heal or protect yourself? About how to counter things that can harm you? Nothing but what the author left behind in the hope that the knowledge would aid future half-ghosts?"

Danny's blush was glowing. Literally. If his ghostly eyes processed light like his human ones, he would be pretty much blinded. "Oh," he said.

"Do you think that's something you ought to look into?" asked Clockwork.

Danny wrung his hands. "It still isn't really, you know, about _them._ "

Clockwork gave him a look.

"This isn't going to, you know, make me high, is it?"

"Are you going to go looking for plants that will make you high?"

"No," said Danny. "But I feel like what I intend to do and what actually happens are going to be two different things."

Clockwork smirked. Actually smirked. Like an anime character. "They generally are, aren't they?"

"Clockwork, no. I don't want to get high. Like, most of the plants in the book are drugs. I don't want to know what my brain does on ghost drugs. Clockwork," he whined, "I just wanna know about them. The others. How it all worked for them. Please?"

"Daniel," said Clockwork, the grin slipping a little as his body regressed to that of an infant, "I know how you feel, but you can't live in the past."

"I'm not trying to," said Danny. "I just want to know about it. Don't they say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it?"

Clockwork fluffed Danny's hair. "I could arrange that, you know. A time loop."

Danny ducked away from Clockwork's hand. "Pass," he said.

"Just try to find your answers in the present, for now," said Clockwork. "Work on your research skills."

"Okay," said Danny. He sighed. "Thank you for showing me that city. It was nice, for a little bit."

Clockwork's answering smile was soft.

.

Danny wrote his translations in ballpoint pen on the backs of the pages of Sam's printout of the manuscript.

"I'm not sure what you need us for," said Tucker, flipping a loose page back and forth. "Not if you can read these, and you're planning a solo trip."

"He isn't planning a solo trip," said Jazz with a glare that said he'd very well better not be planning a solo trip.

"I'm not," reassured Danny. "I just need help deciding what's going to be useful. You guys have a different perspective than I do."

"What he means to say," said Sam, "is that we're the ones who patch him up."

"Well, yeah. But there are some things in here that do stuff for humans as well, so-"

"There's a lot of human medicine made for humans," said Jazz, "and a lot less half-ghost medicine made for half-ghosts. Let's focus on you, at least for a little bit."

"Okay," agreed Danny. "That makes sense, I guess." He started sorting the pages into piles.

"Why is this one all crossed out?" asked Tucker.

Danny looked up to see what page he was talking about and winced. "It's not important," he said.

"Now I'm curious," said Sam.

Danny pouted. They weren't going to let it go, he could tell. "It's, um, it's... It's a," he tapped his fingers together, "a reproductive thing."

Tucker flung the page away as if it would contaminate him. Sam scowled.

"You two are so immature," she said, accusatory. "It's a perfectly normal bodily function, and all women-"

"Not that kind of reproductive thing," said Danny quickly. "There's something related to that over there, but it's good for other things, too, so I left it in."

"So that," Tucker pointed at the piece of paper, "is ghost vi-?"

"No! No it is not. Why are you like this?" Danny groaned. "It's, if a halfa is exposed to it, it lets them do this ghost reproduction thing that's like budding. You know, from biology? Budding?"

Sam, Jazz, and Tucker leaned to look at the picture. Tall stem, fluffy crown, green, grape-like clusters of fruits underneath.

"Oh," said Tucker, looking like he regretted everything he had ever done. "So if you got touched by this-?"

"No," said Danny. "I'm not going to be, because it was rare even back then."

"Right," said Tucker. Danny shoved a stack of papers at him, and he took it, unresisting.

"Just look through those and pull out the ones you think might be useful, okay?" He gave similar piles to Sam and Jazz. "Then we'll switch."

"We should order them as well," said Jazz. "The most useful ones on top, the least on the bottom?"

"We'll do that after," said Danny. "Otherwise it'll be confusing. And we can group the ones that are supposed to grow together, so maybe we can more than one at a time."

"Good thinking, little brother."

"Don't sound so surprised," said Danny.

"I'm not," said Jazz.

He stuck out his tongue.

"Do these have to be things to use _on_ Danny?" asked Sam, after a minute. "Or things to use _for_ Danny?"

"Why?" asked Jazz as the other two looked up.

"Well, it seems like erasing memories- specific memories- might be useful?" She showed them the picture. The plant looked like forget-me-nots but red.

"No," said Danny, wrinkling his nose. "Those only grow near the Lethe, and I'm not getting anywhere near that. I tempt fate enough as it is. There's no way I'm going near a river that erases memories."

"We'd have to make some kind of potion to use these, too," said Jazz, peering at Danny's translation. "I'd always be afraid of accidentally overdosing someone."

"I guess this goes in the 'no' pile, then."

"Yep. Right along with Stygian Pomegranates. I mean, _why?"_

.

It took some time, and a lot of arguments, but eventually they came up with a consensus regarding which plants they were going to look for. There were five, and, in theory, they all grew in the same sort of places.

Two were analgesics, painkillers. A sort of orange parsley-looking thing and blue poppies. The poppies were stronger, said the book, but, on rare occasions, ghosts got addicted to them. Half-ghosts didn't, but they did get sleepy when they took it.

The third was an antibiotic, recommended for cleaning wounds and preventing infections both mundane and ghostly, something Jazz had been worried about since she first started helping with ghosts. It was a purple moss-like thing. The way to tell if it was the _right_ purple moss-like thing was to step on it and see if it tried to grab you.

The fourth was a stabilizing agent. It was described as a sticky mushroom. Apparently, something in it helped sync up a half-ghost's two halves and prevented melting and other issues. It did have a rather disturbing number of side effects, but nothing really bad. The main gist of them seemed to be that they made halfas slow and heavy, and, well. Honestly, it sounded a lot like being high, darn it.

The last wasn't really a medicine. It was more like an emergency anti-Vlad defense measure. It's pollen made ghosts, and half-ghosts, pass out. Danny wasn't sure if it would be in bloom, heck, he didn't know if any of these plants would be 'ripe,' but he always hated how vulnerable his human friends and family were against Vlad. Sure, they had ghost weapons, but those were often of limited utility against half-ghosts. This was something that would actually work, and wouldn't be too harmful to Danny.

"Actually," said Sam, only half-joking, "it might quality as medicine, too considering your sleep schedule."

"Ha ha ha," said Danny, "very funny. My sleep schedule is fine."

"No it isn't," chorused the three humans.

"Fine, fine, whatever, but if any of you use it on me, you will regret it."

"So," said Tucker, "are we doing this now, or?"

"Later," said Danny. "Mom and Dad are going to a conference in a few days. We'll go then, so we can take the Specter Speeder."

.

Sam arrived with what looked like most of the stock from a garden supply store.

"Don't look at me like that," said Sam. "You know ghost stuff, I know gardening stuff. This is my thing."

"I just- I usually don't bring that much..." Danny gestured at the shovels, pots, and who knew what else, "stuff," he finished.

"That's because you _are_ the stuff," said Sam. "Help me carry this to the speeder."

"How did you even get it all here?" asked Danny, perplexed. He stooped to gather up some of the supplies.

"I have a chauffeur, remember?"

"I thought your parents didn't let him bring you here, anymore."

"They changed their minds," said Sam, darkly.

Danny decided he didn't want to know.

Tucker was already in the basement, checking over the Speeder and making sure its antivirus was up to snuff. They didn't want Skulker or Technus hacking the thing. Gosh, Danny could see it now, the four of them- well, technically the three of them, Danny could fly- stranded on a tiny island complete with a purple palm tree and sharp-toothed coconuts, because Technus thought it would be fun to crash the Speeder.

He didn't need that in his afterlife.

He, Jazz, and Sam packed the garden supplies into the back of the Speeder, next to their picnic cooler. Hey, they were going out to pick plants. They might as well have a picnic lunch while they were at it. Who was going to stop them? Ghosts? Please.

Once Tucker was satisfied as to the integrity of the Speeder's software, the three humans jumped in, Jazz piloting, and followed Danny into the Ghost Zone.

The Ghost Zone was, as always, weird, full of half-melted buildings, pointless stairs, free-floating doors, and migrating islands. Danny spun once along each of axes, orienting himself.

"Alright," he said, putting a hand to the Fenton Phone in his ear. "The place I'm thinking of should be this way." He pointed to a collection of murky buildings.

"We're right behind you," said Jazz, voice clear over Danny's earpiece. "Lead the way."

As they approached the buildings, they could clearly see plants of many hues growing perpendicularly from the brick sides of the building. The poppies were the most visible, their flowers as large as Danny's hand and glowing with a color not commonly seen in the Ghost Zone. The other plants present weren't, as far as Danny could see, the ones that they were looking for.

He sighed. He hadn't really expected to find all of the plants, and he knew he was lucky to have remembered where he last saw _one_ of the five plants they were looking for. Still, he would have liked to have seen the others.

He landed on a small bare spot on the side of the building, and Jazz started to settle the Speeder on the greenery next to him. As it approached the wall, the taller plants bent back, revealing tiny golden star-shaped flowers he recognized from the book and had thought would be _much_ larger.

The Speeder touched down and kicked up a huge cloud of yellow powder.

Danny reflected he should have known this would happen.

He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

.

Danny woke up in his bed. This seemed wrong, somehow. Had he not been in his bed when he went to sleep?

He pried his oddly gritty eyes open.

"Sleeping beauty awakens!" said Tucker, loud enough to make Danny jump. "And Sam didn't even have to kiss you."

"Are you alright?" asked Jazz, hovering (not literally).

"Yeah," said Danny, rubbing an eye. "I feel fine, I- Ugh. Was I hit with the sleeping stuff?"

"Yep," said Sam. "We probably should have seen that coming, to be honest."

Danny pulled himself into a sitting position and started to pry off his shoes. "Were you able to get the plants, at least? Or did you just come back?"

"Nah," said Tucker. "We knew what knocked you out, so we weren't too worried. We got the blue flowers, the sleeping powder flowers, and the moss. We couldn't find any of the other ones, but there _was_ a vine that tried to eat us, so, you know."

Danny groaned and flopped back onto the bed. "Did any of you at least try to wake me up?" he asked.

"With your sleep schedule?" asked Jazz. "Hardly."

"We did our best _not_ to wake you up," said Sam.

"Even when you were fighting the carnivorous vine?"

"Especially when we were fighting the carnivorous vine."

Danny narrowed his eyes. There was something suspicious about that. "You guys... you didn't dose me _again_ did you?"

No one would meet his eyes.

"Oh, come on! My sleep schedule isn't _that_ bad!"


End file.
